Artist Ken Gonzales-Day joined ART 393/ AMS 392/ JRN 393 “Getting the Picture: Photojournalism in the U.S. from the Printed Page to AI,” taught by Princeton University Art Museum Curator of Photography and A&A Lecturer Katherine Bussard, to present and discuss his Erased Lynching series and decades-long research into the history of lynchings in California. The series shows photographs of lynchings between 1850 and 1935, from which Gonzales-Day removed, or “erased,” the victims to draw attention to the historic absence of Latinx, Asian, Native American victims from the history of lynching in California.

“Ken’s exhaustive work with countless newspapers from the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth century as both an artist and scholar made his perspective an important one as our course traces the historical arc of photojournalism,” said Bussard. “Moreover, Ken’s attentiveness to the intentions, ethics, and trauma of such photographs in circulation exemplifies the kind of careful consideration of complex images each student in this course is honing, whatever their subject.”

Gonzales-Day points to the immigration policy of the George W. Bush administration as having spawned a criminalization of immigration across the border between the United States and Mexico that resulted in a new era of aggression against immigrants and prompting Gonzales-Day to trace its roots.  Erased Lynching emerged in reaction.

“The conceptual gesture of ‘erasure’ provided a visual solution to something that I saw as a cultural problem, one that had been ignored, and/or created by those historians who had come before me, and therefore required the reframing of this history, though a very different lens.”

— Ken Gonzales-Day

“The work began as a response to real-life vigilantes who began to garner media attention along the U.S./Mexico border back in the early 2000s when groups like the Minute Man Project sought to enflame anti-immigration political rhetoric and imagery in the media, which ultimately fueled violence against Hispanics, Latina/o/x/s, and immigrant communities from across the Americas,” Gonzales-Day explained.

Between 2000 and 2006, Gonzales-Day searched through archives of four California newspapers and historic photographic postcards for documented lynchings, defined as extrajudicial killings using rope. Relying on at least two sources per data point, he found over 350 cases of lynching in the state (nearly seven times the number of cases previously acknowledged by organizations like the NAACP and Tuskegee Institute). Though the historical record showed the underreported number of victims to be white, Gonzales-Day’s findings were far more diverse. “There were lynching victims from Asia -- the majority coming from China. There were Latinx victims from the early Californios to those from Mexico, Central, and South America. There were victims from the eastern United States, from Europe, and even Australia,” said Gonzales-Day.

Central to the work, the choice to manipulate the images in PhotoShop, removing the victims and ropes, had layered objectives. Gonzales-Day aimed to protect the lynching victims while reckoning with the perpetrators, employing a tactic that, itself, underscored the offense of omitting crimes against the Latinx community, both then and now. 

“Rather than re-victimizing those murdered in such collective and often premeditated acts of killing, the work in this series allows the viewer to focus on the crowd - complete with their jeering and smiling faces -- and to invite a rethinking of American history and Western history in particular,” said Gonzales-Day. “The conceptual gesture of ‘erasure’ provided a visual solution to something that I saw as a cultural problem, one that had been ignored, and/or created by those historians who had come before me, and therefore required the reframing of this history, though a very different lens.” “I also wanted to encourage viewers to see the similarities between lynch mobs across our Nation, and across time,” Gonzales-Day continued, “and to invite viewers to consider the ongoing erasure of Latinx communities from our national narrative, even in states like California, where our numbers continue to grow, and yet continue to be under-represented from City hall to the Capitol Hill.”

A Thought- and Discussion-Provoking Topic

Gonzales-Day’s presentation spurred robust discussion in the class. 

The group investigated photography as an inherently violent medium; the photographer performs an act of violence upon taking the photo, regardless of its content—and when viewers take offense to content, new iterations of violence occur. 

For Kate Stewart ’25, a senior in A&A’s Practice of Art track, Gonzales-Day’s work shed new light on a topic she has closely examined. “Throughout my time at Princeton, I have done a lot of research on the effects of atrocity photography… [and] argued against its circulation in the modern era due to the oversaturation of brutal imagery in media, which has led to public desensitization and the perpetuation of both generational and affinitive trauma,” she said. Interrogating Gonzales-Day’s work in this context, Stewart appreciated his effort to spotlight elided crimes and injustices. “I think that it is important, especially in the current climate, that we do not forget or minimize the atrocities that were common practice in the history of the United States, ensuring they are not repeated,” she said.  But she took issue with his method. “While I see the artist’s intention, I found myself stuck grappling with my appreciation that the bodies were removed, and my gut frustration that once again the perpetrators are the focus of the narrative,” she said. “In addition, it is unsettling to consider the ability to alter or erase history, especially in photographs, which have long been regarded as evidence of past events.”

On the other hand, fellow Practice of Art student Julianna Martin ’26 found the approach effective, calling it “extremely powerful in shaping a new understanding of history that is often never taught.”  “Being born and raised in Northern California having never known about this untold history until I encountered Ken's work last week has been eye-opening,” she continued, “and I plan to share this work and history which I find to be extremely important with my family and friends.”

“Ken's visit and this photojournalism class have prompted me to think about how mass media systems function to selectively disseminate and simultaneously exclude certain images, pieces of history, and critical information from the broader public.” 

— Julianna Martin '26

Along with the violence implicated in his work, Gonzales-Day also spoke of the solace he found in the practice of photography. Martin found this particularly interesting. “This was inspiring because it made me feel like photography and making art truly do have the potential to help heal from collective loss and continue to bring awareness to re-interpret historical events,” she said. “Hearing him talk about how he spent time at sites of past lynchings in California and photographed trees which he referred to as ‘historical witnesses’ was moving and resonated with me. I found it interesting that he said this project was not intended to be documentary or entirely factual, but rather a sort of performative and spiritual reckoning with the landscapes and searching for the trees rather than finding or discovering them.”

Both Martin and Stewart agreed that Gonzales-Day’s visit to the class progressed their understanding of art and photography. For Martin, the presentation “opened up new ways for me of thinking about practices of archiving, erasure, and representing violence in photography,” said Martin. “Ken's visit and this photojournalism class have prompted me to think about how mass media systems function to selectively disseminate and simultaneously exclude certain images, pieces of history, and critical information from the broader public,” she continued. 

“His work generated thought and discussion that was unique from that in which I have engaged previously,” Stewart affirmed, adding that it “managed to address many key issues and raise questions about spectacle, representation, fact, narrative, and understanding.”

“What can—or will—be reported and pictured in U.S. news sources is potentially changing with each new Executive Order and libel lawsuit,” said Bussard.  “I cannot think of more important issues and questions to discuss.”